Recent reviews by PetarNotPeter

There’s nothing more boring than moments in a game where nothing happens, and you’re forced to wait! In "Sunless Sea", it often happened that I would stare at the screen, which at that moment could have been completely black—empty, because nothing was happening while my little boat struggled through the sea. In the beginning, I imagined moving around on the boat, talking to officers, wondering what the horizon of the underground sea would look like, whether distant city lights and lighthouses would be flickering everywhere or if it would be an eternal night. I filled that time gap... but after several playthroughs, even that became boring. At first, when the map is still unexplored, slow movement makes sense. You feel the tension as you slowly erase the fog of war from the map and discover dock and island locations, connect trade routes, and uncover stories developing between them. But after you’ve discovered everything and understand how it all works, slow movement becomes unbearably tedious and boring—you can literally look at your phone while playing because nothing is happening. It wouldn’t be a problem if there was some progression of speed, or some portals that would speed up movement on the map, but that’s not the case. You’re condemned to long moments where absolutely nothing happens, and you feel like you’re wasting a lot of time because of it.

But at the end of every such tedious journey, there is a house with vampires, devilish woman that feed on souls, a snow child that will melt if you don’t find it a new cold metal heart, an island where mice and hamsters are waging war over a fallen star... At the end of each journey, there’s a story, written in an engaging language, and you’ll really want to know how it ends!

The game is a collection of short stories that you uncover by carefull resource management, planning routes from dock to dock, and through reading the stories, you earn rewards that allow you to explore other stories and, through them, dive even deeper into the world! The game’s visual presentation is minimalistic and simple, though much of it leaves room for the player’s imagination. The basic visual and sound elements, along with the bird’s-eye view of the world, are imaginative and striking enough to leave an impression of Lovecraftian horror, which is the foundation of the "Sunless Sea" world.

I won’t delve into the rogue-like elements of the game because I think they aren’t as important here. What makes "Sunless Sea", worthwhile is the unique world that is connected through a simple visual presentation, and simple game mechanic of trade routes, and very well-written short stories. When I say short stories, I don’t just mean the content of the individual stories as a whole! I also mean the separate texts elements of each story, which are written in a few sentences on the screen and rhythmically divided, both geographically by islands and temporally, as parts of the story are revealed to you as you explore. Every sentence is striking, thoughtful, and poetic. And believe me, they work so well because of the overall design of the game—they wouldn’t leave such a powerful impression if you were to read them separately on the internet or in a book.

The way this game tells the stories throw its specific rhythm is what makes it worthwhile, and even if the slow-burn gameplay pushes you away and you abandon the adventure, even the first few stories you experience will leave a deep impression on you!

In short:

Just play the first game.


If you decide to go for the agony, stay awhile and listen!

Unlike the first game, all the bosses in this game are absolutely generic. I mean, all their attacks have been seen in every game before, and there are no new moves that you'd expect given the mechanics the game offers (like different weapons and more complex movements compared to the first game), EVERYTHING HAS BEEN SEEN BEFORE. The bosses and enemies telegraph their attacks, they are visually unimpressive, repetitive, and forgettable. There is no variety in the bosses. There is one very important difference with the second-to-last boss, Eviterno.

Throughout the game, there is no progression in the difficulty of the bosses and combat in general—meaning that every boss can be defeated by simply dashing and hitting (without using anything else, like PRAYERS, except for time stop at the end). For this boss, instead of dashing, the focus is on parrying and precise dodging, which was never crucial before to win!!! Even if we overlook that, the fight with this boss is extremely unpredictable—the boss is small (while other bosses with similar mechanics are large) and its moves are less visible to the player, making it harder to react appropriately. The visual and sound cues for attacks are ALL THE SAME! And halfway through, the fight basically turns into a game of luck, which is never a good thing. For example, one attack cue can either mean a hit that CAN be parried or one that CANNOT, which throws off the rhythm of the fight. Maybe it's our fault for not noticing the cue, but then that's a problem with the game, as it should give a clear enough signal. Not to mention that the first phase of the fight is completely unnecessary, as it's too easy, just like all the earlier fights in the game. It doesn't provide a challenge and leads you in the wrong direction for the next fight. We get the impression that the Boss in Ending B would have been a more fitting final boss for the game and its overall tone than the unfortunate Eviterno.

Now, the problem with the difficulty of Eviterno is the problem with the whole game. Rest of the game, before him is just much easier and dumbed down! The levels are stretched out, backtracking is absolutely tedious, and it's often unclear where you need to go, with no clear signposts anywhere. Though it is fun to explore each level and find items that are mostly unnecessary. Every level feels like a copy of the previous one. The quests themselves are so obscure and unnecessarily dragged out, and it’s impossible to solve them without metagaming, and the rewards they give are extremely useful and maybe even crucial for some battles (we’re thinking about the time stop).
This brings us to the weapon mechanics. The question arises: why do we have three weapons when they seem to be just heavy, medium, and light attack types split into three, rather than one weapon? Okay, we accepted this rule and expected the level and boss mechanics to match the weapons we have at our disposal, but no level fully utilizes this mechanic, and the bosses do not at all! It feels like just a gimmick and an unnecessary complication in the game.

As for the visual and auditory experience, it feels like the game was designed by an anxious teenager obsessed with Catholicism (in a bad way). We’re talking about very poorly animated cutscenes, both in terms of animation quality and style, which is completely detached from the visual design of the game. While the first game actually captured "something" with all that exaggeration, the second game completely misses the mark…

Oh yes we forgot! The game is very buggy even after massive updates and DLC!


(written by petarnotpeter and mclovin)

I'm not a fan of the Star Wars universe, which feels more like a children's/Disney world that encompasses the entire franchise. The only part of the Star Wars universe I still love is KOTOR 2.

"Fallen Order" is a classic Star Wars setting that leans more toward the pre-Disney world of classic Star Wars, and I don’t find it appealing. The story is mediocre, the main character is irritating, the supporting characters are uninteresting and shallow, and the dialogue is poorly written, sometimes very cringey. Except for BD-1. He’s the only bright spot as a character in the game and actually makes Cal somewhat tolerable.

Where this game truly shines is in level design. I haven't seen such precise and streamlined labyrinthine space design in a video game for a long time. It was an absolute pleasure to explore every level! The backtracking was exciting! I even felt satisfaction when I found useless cosmetic items scattered throughout the levels! The uninteresting story and all the issues with the game that come from a poorly written world actually fade into the background thanks to the phenomenal level design, and they no longer even feel like problems. The true Star Wars universe is felt in that labyrinthine space, which is so thoughtfully crafted! Along with the beautiful visual presentation of the world's geography, which also tells a story, the logic of spatial connections highlights the complexity of events. And of course, when you find BD-1's logs, war remnants, or old hieroglyphs, the world opens up to you in ways the story does not allow!

It’s worth noting that this game absolutely should not be played below Jedi Master difficulty, as all lower difficulties feel more or less like a walking cinematic, which diminishes the exploration aspect of the game and the complexity of the levels. In my opinion, the true difficulty for this game is Grandmaster. Enemies actually become challenging, and you have to use everything at your disposal to get through the game. Also, the lazy enemy setups, make more sense at grandmaster difficulty (even at the end of the game, where the game mainly bombards you with enemies).

The only real flaw in the game are the bosses. They are poorly designed (Gorgara, I’m looking at you), predictable, and, if I can say, old-fashioned. At grandmaster difficulty, these problems are less noticeable, but then another issue arises where some boss moves become very cheesy (like Trilla’s one-shot attack that is very hard to notice on time).

"Fallen Order" is a true representation of a successful commercial game from 2019! All the successful game design elements from the past decade have been applied, especially the well-utilized Souls-like mechanics. Don’t expect to see anything new or revolutionary in this game. It’s just a very well-assembled and thoughtful product designed to entertain, and it does that very well. The people who made this game clearly knew what they were doing, and their skill should be admired!

Kentucky Route Zero is something closest to a lyrical narrative in a video game. At times, it doesn't even feel like a video game, but rather a visual novel; sometimes it's a text-based game, sometimes an adventure, and at other times, an animated theatrical performance. The different genres that the game so gracefully and gently employs work very well interwoven, so thinly that they almost break apart, but that never happens, and the game remains consistent in the poetic language it establishes from the beginning until the very end.

I have an incredible urge to share some moments from the game that are so beautiful and striking, but I think that would be a spoiler, and it's important for you to experience them yourself. You’ll want to share them with someone too, because the game is that moving!

The main theme of "The Witness" is the brief moments of "enlightenment" that come when you find a solution to an seemingly unsolvable problem. The game develops this theme to the point of absurdity. From the simplest puzzles on the screen to the geography of the entire game world, every part of "The Witness" serves this purpose. The game drives you through an obsession with the search for "meaning," treating meaning as the ultimate problem, and it does this well. Even the pause menu is black like closed eyes, with outlines of puzzle shapes, emphasizing the omnipresence and obsession with solving riddles, as if the player thinks only about this and sees nothing else.

But that is also a problem with "The Witness". The sheer number of variations on the same puzzle becomes overwhelming and tedious, and the moments of enlightenment are no longer enough to keep up with the quantity of puzzles. You begin to wish for concrete answers regarding what is happening on the island, and at some point, you just want the game to end. Everything the game offers you up to that point—through audiobooks, petrified people in ordinary and extraordinary situations, and films—is not sufficient; it might even be discouraging, as these pieces of information are half-puzzles themselves, leaving you without any real motivation to engage with them seriously.

There is no concrete resolution. I won’t spoil the ending, but after struggling through the last puzzles, you receive no answer. Maybe I missed some crucial information in the remaining films or audiobooks, but as I said, I didn't have the will to seek them out, and now I even doubt they would reveal anything new to me.

Don’t get me wrong; "The Witness" is a phenomenal study of puzzles and should be played as such. I’m giving it a negative rating solely because the ending disappointed me so much that my main impression after the whole game is that I wasted too much time, which isn’t good.

The eerie atmosphere created by the situation quickly dissipates once you realize there’s actually no threat. The game operates on the level of a jump-scare joke.

It’s been 8 years since the release of the scam known as No Man's Sky. Back then, it didn’t have base building, it lacked multiplayer, and the randomly generated worlds were very limited and boring—not to mention the story...

In short, not much has changed. The base building is uninspired and clunky. The multiplayer is buggy, and it feels tacked on to a game that never wanted multiplayer in the first place. The randomly generated worlds become uninteresting after the first planet (very fast you realize that all planets are very alike), and the story is still as dumb as it was. Essentially, the world of No Man's Sky boils down to basic mechanics of resource gathering and selling / buying, and everything is geared toward that, making the size of the procedurally generated world irrelevant. It all comes down to luck—the endless world feels like a gimmick.

It's still better to play Elite Dangerous, which is more complex and engaging, or Starbound, where you actually feel a sense of adventure and discovery in a new world. If you just want to fly through space and relax, play Space Engine. That’s even more interesting...

Pretty graphics aren’t enough.

Murders, slaughter, looting, a plague that decimates the entire town, corpses, mass graves, war, deception, dead babies, hangings—this is all present in Pathologic 2, and even more horrifying stuff!

The rules of this world are brutal and complex, punishing the player for even the slightest moment of negligence. Money, inflation, thirst and the search for food will be a constant problem. Should you break into a house and steal a piece of bread, risking the life of a household member or your own? Should you trade your so important tools with children for a boiled egg, just so you could survive for little while? Planning your route to avoid bandits and infected areas of the town will add pressure to save as many people from the plague as possible, with time running out. If hunger overwhelms you, or you get killed by a bandit or plague, the game punishes you for your death, complicating the rest of your playthrough without the option to reload without consequences (the penalty remains for all previous saves) or taking something unessential for your progress, but important for you (like the ability to hug someone).

Chance to lose the ability to hug someone, and a feeling of dread after learning that you can't do that anymore, is the power of Pathologic 2, because it makes you care for its characters.

Beneath all this nightmare, lies an innocence and warmth that can only exist in a child's mind, or some kind of children's game. A polyhedron defying gravity, inhabited solely by children; a mountain-sized bull named Bos Turokh; Characters that look like villains but are actually gentle and good; worm-people; time travel, prophet rats, ghosts...

This conflict between the rational and irrational horror, and the world of childhood, warmth, and the possibility of change and growth, makes the world of Pathologic 2 so convincing and real! Its brutality in gameplay is justified by the tenderness it shows towards its characters. As a haruspax, a surgeon, you, the player, genuinely want to save these people from the plague. You want to save them all. At first, you don't even know why, because the game draws you into its magic so quickly. It compels you to believe in it.

No matter how hard you fight, or what choice you make when it comes to that (and in the end, a tough choice awaits you), you can’t save everyone. And the game teaches you that. And it hurts.